Website Designers and Website Developers who use content marketing to generate awareness for their services and increase traffic to their website should write blog articles during the holidays. Holidays provide a great opportunity to attract new visitors to your website if you create holiday-related content and optimize it with holiday-related keywords.

There are a number of reasons why holiday provide an excellent opportunity to increase website traffic. In this article we will explain why holidays offer website designers and developers such a great opportunity to increase website traffic, review the benefits holiday-related online content provide, discuss planning for upcoming holidays, show you how to come up with content topic ideas that correspond to annual holidays, and talk about the different types of online content website designers and website developers can create.

How Can Publishing Content around Holidays Can Increase Website Traffic?

Holidays can provide website designers and website developers who use content marketing to increase awareness about their services and drive traffic to their website with an excellent opportunity to attract new visitors to their website. Why? Well, the reasons are numerous. Here’s the short list:

• There are more people searching the web around the holidays. (Larger quantity of potential website visitors)
• People have more free time around the holidays. The time people spend online usually increases around the holidays. (Longer time spent online)
• People are always looking for holiday-related “things” online. Many people (thus business owners) know that they can usually find discounted pricing on products and services around the holidays.
• More likely to get media coverage around the holidays if you’re offering something interesting or news-worthy.

The list above is comprised of just a few of the reasons why website designers and website developers should take advantage of holidays for attracting more visitors to their website. Knowing that more people are spending more time online during the holidays, and armed with the fact that those people are looking for holiday-related content, website designers and developers should at minimum come up with creative holiday-related content to publish on their site. That said, if website designers and website developers want to take it one step further they should come up with a holiday-related marketing strategy that includes a promotional offer designed to convert these new visitors into customers. Either way, taking advantage of the holidays to increase website traffic is a smart idea for website designers and website developers.

Benefits of Publishing Holiday-Related Content for Website Designers and Website Developers

We started getting into a few of the benefits in earlier portions of this article, but in this section we are going to cover a few more of the top benefits that website designers and developers will receive if they create a marketing strategy around producing holiday-related content and/or holiday-related promotional offers. Below is a list of the top benefits of publishing holiday-related content:

• Increased traffic to your website.
• Increased awareness of your products and services.
• Longer time spent on your website by website traffic.
• Great opportunity to convert website visitors into customers via a holiday-related promotional offer.
• Better chance for an idea going viral as more people and businesses like talking about holidays (it’s something that many people share, thus a larger portion of people online are likely to talk about it).
• Higher potential for media coverage based on how relevant and creative your strategy is.

The list above are some of the top benefits that website designers and website developers would receive if they take the time to come up with a holiday-related marketing strategy that leverages publishing holiday-related online content.

Content Planning for Upcoming Holidays

If you are considering leveraging holidays in order to increase traffic to your website then the single biggest piece of advice I can give you is to plan accordingly. One of the best things about coming up with a holiday-related marketing strategy is that you know exactly what holidays people celebrate and exactly when they will fall each year. This means you can start your planning at the beginning of the year or even the year(s) prior. If you really want to have success with this strategy it is imperative that you take time to plan for it. The more time you dedicate to planning, the more likely that you’ll come up with a creative idea that not only generates more website traffic, but also has a good chance of converting new visitors into customers.

Content Planning: Set Goals

The very FIRST thing you need to do whenever you start planning for ANYTHING is to set goals. Setting a goal for each holiday OR for your entire holiday-related marketing strategy will give you something to work towards. Everything else that you do should be geared towards achieving that goal.

Content Planning: Define Your Strategy & Tactics

Once you’ve come up with your goal(s) it’s time to develop your marketing strategy. You know you want to leverage content marketing, so now you must decide if you want to tie in a promotional offer and use this opportunity to generate sales. Once that decision is made you can now start flushing out the actual marketing tactic(s). Answering the following questions will help you define your tactic(s):

• How much time do I have to create and manage this tactic?
• What content vehicles should I use? There are 4 types of online content (discussed more below), which ones will you leverage for this tactic?
• What will you offer visitors in order to get them to take action (the action is defined by the goal you set)?
• How will you get your online content in front of your target audience?
• How will you fulfill your offer?

Once these questions are answered your holiday-related marketing tactic should start coming into view for you.

How to Come Up with Content Topics Related to Holidays

Coming up with holiday-related content topics is actually easier than you might think. It’s really derived from your marketing strategy and your goals. After that it’s all about creativity. Below are a few tips that you can leverage when trying to think about holiday-related content topics:

• Review your goals and strategy for this initiative and start thinking about content related to that.
• Think about the holiday. What time of year does it fall? What’s the meaning behind it? What are some of the cultural elements of it?
• Take a look at your target audience. Do they celebrate the holiday? Does it resonate with them moreso than others? Can you leverage that?
• What fun things do you do on the holiday? How about your company? Would telling those stories appeal to your audience? Does what you do at home spark any ideas for interesting content ideas to write about?

Here are a few example holiday-related content topic ideas for website designers and website developers:

• Images of your company celebrating the holiday
• Special Offer – Update Your Website Design to correspond to the holiday. You can run a special promotion whereby you charge customers to update their website design to include a few holiday-related elements.
• Where is your company located? Write about local holiday-related news or stories that your customers might find interesting.
• Participate in a charity event or donate your time/employees time to help the local community around the holiday.
  As you can see from the lists above, once you start thinking through it, you can probably come up with dozens of holiday-related content ideas.

4 Types of Holiday-Related Online Content

As we mentioned above, there are 4 main types of online content, and holiday-related online content is no different. Website Designers and Website Developers should take a look at the goals they set and the strategy they have come up with, and then determine which type(s) of content makes the most sense to leverage for this initiative. So what are the 4 types of holiday-related online content? They are as follows:

• Blog (or written) Content
• Video Content
• Audio Content
• Image-Based Content

Holiday-Related Online Content: Blog Content

Blogging is a great way to increase website traffic. If you use a blog to share information with your website visitors then I would highly recommend at least including writing holiday-related blog articles as at least one component of your online content strategy. Blogging allows you to tell your story and then optimize it full of holiday-related keywords in order to attract relevant visitors to your website. Holiday-related blog articles are great for SEO, as well as, for viral marketing. People love sharing great holiday stories.

Holiday-Related Online Content: Video Content

Video content is much more engaging than blog content, so definitely consider using video as a component for this marketing tactic. Now, creating holiday-related videos requires much more time, planning, and possibly money to produce, but the impact is much more powerful. It might be as simple as shooting a quick video around the office. You can interview some of your employees and get them to share their favorite holiday stories, or let your audience know something they plan on doing for the holiday, etc. When people think of video marketing most of the time they think of production level video, but in reality, a real-life video giving your audience a glimpse into your company could be just as powerful.

Holiday-Related Online Content: Audio Content

Maybe you can create your own holiday song related to your company, your audience, or even your products and services. Perhaps you want to do an interview with some local residents to find out what they are looking forward to during the holidays? Do you used podcasts as part of your marketing mix? If so, a holiday-related podcast could be a great tool for this initiative.

Holiday-Related Online Content: Image-based Content

Last, but certainly not least, image-based content is very easy to produce and can make quite an impact with your audience. Holiday-related images are always fun. People enjoy seeing holiday pictures. Think company Christmas party or a designed Valendtine’s Day E-Card that shows off your company’s design skills. You can either take pictures or you can create pictures in Photoshop that align with the holiday and your strategy for this initiative. People love sharing great pictures. Think of how many pictures you see people sharing on Facebook around the holidays. You can leverage this to achieve your goals.

Increase Website Traffic by Taking Advantage of Upcoming Holidays

Now that you have a better idea of all of the benefits that holidays can provide your company, will you implement a holiday-related content strategy for your website design and development company? People love holidays because they have time to spend with their friends, families, and even themselves. When people have more free time, website traffic and time spent online increases. Website design and website development companies should take advantage of this by implementing a holiday-related content strategy.